Philosophy, science and social commentary posts by a 21-year old university student. :3

Okay, so I’ll just make a fairly simplistic objection here. Solipsism as a position is largely supported by arguments from analogy and arguments from possibility; my focus in this quick post will be to question the viability of the latter.

Implicit (perhaps even explicit) in arguing for solipsism on the basis of possibility is that one can cleanly make a transition from epistemic possibility (i.e “as far as I know, X is possible”) to metaphysical possibility (i.e “X is true in some metaphysically possible world”). But there are some problems here, especially where solipsism is concerned. Now, the sort of trick with solipsism is that there is necessarily no observation or empirical evidence which could refute it. From this, it seems to follow that solipsism is compatible with any *perceived* or conceivable state of affairs. But do you see the problem? This makes solipsism unfalsifiable. Not only is there no empirical basis on which to refute solipsism, there is no empirical evidence to *support* it.

So, my admittedly simplistic objection is this: Given solipsism cannot be substantiated, how can one possibly (pun intended) justify solipsism? That is, how can one move from saying “Solipsism is epistemically possible” to saying “Solipsism is metaphysically possible”, when one has embraced a position which lacks any apparent means by which to make the transition from the former to the latter? I’m more or less using a Moorean shift here. Essentially, I’ve got two competing propositions to consider:

“The external world is just an illusion.”

“My mental experience is at least somewhat accurately representing the world as it is.”

The solipsist is attempting to have me put more trust in certain intuitions that the world could be solipsistic than in my continual experience of the world. This move of rejecting one’s pre-theoretical notions of the world itself is not necessarily problematic (cf. Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity), but for it to be a rational request, there’s going to need to be some pretty persuasive and powerful evidence presented in defense of doing so.And given the lack of support for or against solipsism (because of its inherent unfalsifiability), it seems, on the face of it, that the latter proposition is justified, while the former proposition lacks *any* means of justification. Notice these objections are not just pragmatic in nature, but that they point (so far as I can tell) to a legitimate epistemic problem with the concept of solipsism.

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I’ve often wondered about what philosophers generally believe, as well as why they generally believe them, especially with respect to religious philosophers. And thanks to the largest survey of philosophers ever done back in 2010 with the Phil Papers survey, I will use that information to speculate about the latter question. Sources:

Okay, so I’ve a sort of annoyance with apologists’ use of philosophy. Now, as I quite like several areas of philosophy, my reason isn’t their usage of philosophy per se, but what motivates them I guess. So why is that, you ask? Well, let’s take into account the following sorts of considerations:

Most philosophers hold to, for example, a compatibilist conception of free will (~60% of philosophers polled). That is to say, they think free will and determinism can be reconciled in a meaningful way that does not result in bloating our view of the world with absurd metaphysical acts, as libertarian free will does. So why don’t religious apologists and philosophers of religion (we shouldn’t confuse the two as synonyms, of course) tend to hold to compatibilism (only 25.5% of philosophers of religion hold to compatibilism, and most of them (19.1%) are atheists) given its evident success in philosophy in general (~58% of philosophers of religion hold to libertarian free will)? To me, the answer is fairly obvious: The Problem of Evil.

If agents are also determined like the rest of the natural world, yet compatibilism still offers an “out” of sorts for free will, why didn’t God determine the world to be good? Clearly, most Christians just cannot accept compatibilism as true because the majority of their religious beliefs just don’t work with it, given the way the world is. And this extends beyond the free will debate:

* Why do most philosophers of religion tend to hold to an A-theory of time (~40%)? It’s often thought that the universe necessarily needs a cause, and the B-theory of time is simply not generally thought allow for this sort of thing, since the universe doesn’t “begin to exist” so much as it has a spatio-temporal boundary. So it’s no surprise that this view is more popular amongst them.

* Why do most philosophers of religion tend to avoid consequentialism as a normative ethical theory noticeable less than philosophers overall? Probably because doctrines like Hell would seem to mean, for consequentialists, that God is massively immoral.

* Why do most philosophers of religion reject physicalist accounts of the mind (63.8%) in stark contrast to philosophers generally (56.5%!)? I think it’s clearly because physicalist accounts of the mind are fundamentally in contradiction to the notion of an afterlife.

You get it. So what’s my point about all this? Contrary to many atheists online, I’m not her to say all religious apologists are charlatans or that theist philosophers of religion are disingenuous or something. My concern here is primarily that given the constraints their prior beliefs, the scope of what positions they can find reasonable or be open to become severely limited. That is, they end up unwittingly engaging in top-down justifications for their beliefs by tending towards positions that can allow for those positions to at least be plausible. Just look at William Lane Craig. His positions bear out this exact sort of thing, since he’s a:

-Substance Dualist
-Libertarian on free will (I THINK; he sometimes sounds like a compatibilist)
-A-theory of time (to support his Kalam Cosmological Argument)
-Deontologist

And I think non-religious philosophers have, at least prima facie, less inherent constraints upon their thought, and hence are more able to consider the various positions (like those listed above), even if they tend towards a naturalistic, physicalist view (rightly, I think). This is not to say they don’t have their biases, it’s just I don’t think they have ones that as narrowly constrain them (generally) as their religious colleagues.

I think I initially had more to say on this topic, but I’m too tired to remember. Oh well.

~Peace

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So a guy I chitchat with on Twitter now and then (@Ramansat, if you’re interested) was asking me about how I became and atheist and my transition through and out of the “New Atheist” movement the other day, so I figured I’d give it the old college try. I’ve never really done this sort of thing before, so bear with me if the length of this entry is more significant than usual. 🙂

Perhaps it will be more informative to give a little background on me. I come from a fairly religious family (I was primarily raised by and around my mother and her family), and am racially mixed (as are my 4 siblings), and the 2nd oldest child in of the 5. My grandparents are Catholic, though strangely only one of their kids stayed that way so far as I know. The rest, barring an atheist uncle, are Baptists or non-denominational Christians. They’re not what I’d call crazy into religion in the way many evangelicals are, but a few take it pretty seriously (though, perhaps their generally kindly demeanor masks it from me). I myself grew up as a nominal Christian. Went to church (often falling asleep), said the occasional prayer, which I figure is probably pretty standard for most Americans. Thanks to an awesome 2nd grade teacher I had, I developed an early interest in science, particularly astronomy, and found that I surprisingly enjoyed participating in science fairs. And this continued until a short time after I moved to a different city in Texas, at which time my attendance to a local youth group my Mom put me in ended up feeling that I had to take my religious devotion more seriously, and I ended up becoming a “born-again” Christian (this is late 2006, mind you).

Oh man, it’s so weird to try and put myself in that mindset again, it’s hard to describe it. For the first time, I read my Bible frequently, sometimes to the odd glance of my classmates at school. I prayed more frequently, usually asking for strength to resist temptation (Goddamn porn…) or else to batter away unpleasant thoughts. And don’t get me started on the youth camps. Rock n’ roll for Jesus, crying our eyes out in large prayer gatherings at night… *shiver* However, I look back on times fondly. The people I knew, at least, seemed pretty genuine and nice, and I made a lot of friends. My faith in the redemptive power of the Cross gave me strength through some difficult times. There were times of doubt, of course. I even recall a time where I Googled something like “Does God Exist?”. Unfortunately, I ended up on some stupid Young-Earth Creationist website, which was basically telling me 2 things:

1) God exists and real science supports this
2) Scientists who claim evidence exists which says otherwise are using demonstrably flawed methods (like claiming that the only dating method used is carbon dating)

Despite being a YEC for a short time, my love of science eventually won out and I found myself not caring about this sort of thing ever again as a Christian; they were 2 separate spheres for me. I adopted something like the view that when Genesis refers to God creating the Earth in mere days, it was speaking figuratively because there was some part of the Bible that referred to a thousand years being nothing more than a day for God, and so it never really concerned me.

Now, I cannot really recall any particular thing causing me to eventually become an atheist. There was no particularly bad events in my life in the time prior to my deconversion. I think that over time I just could no longer reconcile what I was seeing in the world (especially violence and suffering) with believing in him anymore. My church attendance slipped significantly, and I started to get irritated listening to religious music in general. I do remember crying pretty badly when I realized this, one night, that I had abandoned something that had been so dear and comforting to me no so long ago. And I’ve got to be honest, I despaired for several hours that night. I felt that, even I didn’t believe in God, I had lost anything that gave me purpose in the world. To be frank, I almost felt that suicide would be a better option than to remain with the void the loss of my faith had left, a world in which I had no true purpose in existing in. Contrary to the apparent deconversion story of many atheists I run into online, I cannot say my own deconversion was some steadfast, rational victory in the face of an irrational foe. At the time, for me, it was nothing less than a leeching of a core part of my identity, a loss of my True North; non-rational, really.

It was after I got through this short period of despair that I ended up making my first Twitter account (not telling you guys the username. :p) and announced that I had just become an atheist. Several atheist congratulated me and began pointing to various atheist and anti-religious media. This was how I found my way into the New Atheism. “Brilliant!”, I thought after watching some YouTube video of the late Christopher Hitchens railing against the evils religion, admittedly pretty damn eloquently. “THIS is why I will distance myself from religion. It’s irrational tripe.” And through the wonders of suggested videos, I quickly discovered Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins (I never saw much Dan Dennett media, unfortunately).

And so, I was set on a path of interacting with like minded New Atheists, arguing against religion in the same vein as the aforementioned three did, getting into many long-winded forum and Twitter debates (I still do that occasionally; not much has changed in THAT regard 😉 ) with theists, informing them that everything they said about God existing was bullshit. Eventually, I started to see this William Lane Craig guy and his usage of this thing called “philosophy” a lot. As many around me did, I more or less immediately claimed him an idiot who knew nothing about science and so he couldn’t be correct with his arguments for God’s existence, even if I (though I would never have admitted it) couldn’t find fault with some of those arguments. After a while, I found myself less impressed with Hitchens’ argumentation (Craig was just too good, I thought) and became more tuned towards Sam Harris, who seemed to know a little bit of of philosophy. However, the enigma that was W.L. Craig got me to start reading up on this philosophy business, if only to find a way to refute him. I found myself aligning towards Harris’ approach towards a scientific account of morality, and I found some interesting philosophy-related books at a local library.

One of these books in particular, “Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story” by Jim Holt, began my real interest in philosophy for its own sake. Holt’s interviews and discussions with various people (Swinburne, Penrose, Weinberg, etc.) on this topic was really interesting to me and he personalized it by including how the events and deaths in his own life influenced his perception of this question, so I figured maybe there was more to Craig than using big or strange words/phrases like “epistemology” or “ontology” to confound atheists. As I began to learn more about philosophy and its history, I continually found myself ending up in more disagreements with my fellow “New Atheists”, especially when it pertained to disagreeing with Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins claims on certain matters. I found it odd. I didn’t think I was rocking the boat, I just thought they gave some simplistic answers to some questions, or made silly arguments, one of these being Hitchens oft-used “Name me the moral act a believer can do that an unbeliever cannot.” So what if they occasionally made a poor argument, they were definitely correct about religion and gods overall.

But as I became more acquainted with philosophy and the territory surrounding the unfolding and defense of various arguments within it and the manner in which one needs to nuance their position so as not to be easily rebutted, I found myself becoming annoyed by the style of these New Atheists. Their answers were easy, soundbite answers to interesting questions or arguments, and repeated ad nauseum. “Christianity is a death cult.” “Heaven is a Celestial North Korea.” “Atheism has no burden of justification because atheists merely lack belief.” “The one making the ‘positive’ claim has to justify their position.”, etc. I found myself continually heading towards a view similar to Noam Chomsky’s: These guys were very much like religious fundamentalists; there is no problem here, it’s all been solved and if you disagree you’re most likely demonstrably irrational and you need a little dose of reality. It soon became clear that I was no longer quite the same, and I entered a period similar to the previous one. Not so much despairing, but confused. Theism didn’t seem so easily refuted as New Atheists had claimed. So I decided to interact with both sides quite a bit, and became more familiar with the many arguments and refutations both sides had to each other. And while I eventually found myself to still falling squarely in the atheist camp (atheist as in, gods most probably don’t exist), I had more respect towards theists online and didn’t write them as irrational as I had once done. None of this is to say that I think theism has no problems or that religion doesn’t so often play a shit role in the world or to concede that I think theism is anything like a great thing easily defended, but the broad generalizations of theists and the atheist “I’m so rational” ego train would not do.

And, I’m still chugging along, trying to learn about shit and I’ve gotten to interact with a lot of interesting, intelligent people on both sides, and I’ve been introduced to many topics I’d never even considered or been interested in, from linguistics to issues surrounding gender identity and feminism.

~Peace

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So, I’m a gamer and a programmer, so this topic hits a little close to home for me. And while I’ll be arguing in support for the moral permissibility of software piracy, it’s not something I do myself (admittedly, that’s mostly because I’ve never really owned a powerful enough setup where I could run current-gen games at what I considered an acceptable rate & the game still look nice).

Anyhow, my case is short and relatively easy to grasp. What exactly is being done when one pirates software and other various files? Basically, you’re downloading stuff that’s been replicated by someone who bought and uploaded that item online (I think it’s fairly safe to assume most people uploading these would-be pirated materials didn’t manage steal some physical copy of it). So, generally the producer of these items do in fact get paid for the item they produced. But do they have some further, morally significant claim to what the buyer does personally with their product? I think the water gets murky here for those claiming piracy is theft, pure and simple.

Let’s draw a comparison with what we do with other goods. I have friends who own cars, and friends do not. On various occasions, we carpool together or share our cars with each other. Now, each of us who owns a car legitimately purchased them. So, are our friends whom we share our cars with stealing from us? I think it’s clear enough that they aren’t. Now, are they stealing from car manufacturers? After all, as is often trumpted against digital pirates, these manufacturers are loosing potential revenue from those who share cars/carpool, as they’re getting usage of a product they didn’t pay for.

But this seems odd. Both cases seem essentially equal, in that they each involve the sharing of a purchased product with those whom did not purchase said product, yet it is only with the car (and equivalent instances) where we categorically deny calling it theft. Yet with piracy, whom is being stolen from? Claims of “potential revenue” being lost seem spurious and presumptuous for reasons ranging from how it is you know that those whom use the product actually intended to buy it, to the aforementioned example being situationally equivalent. And pirated material are merely copies of the material produced, so no actual, physical property has been poached whatsoever, by which one could actually make some legitimate claim. Claiming this to be theft seems akin to claiming that, if I had a magical wand that could replicate anything I wanted and I replicated my neighbor’s car so that I had one myself, that I’m stealing from my neighbor. What is my neighbor (or anyone else) actually loosing here?

I suppose that’s really most of what I have to say on the matter. While I think piracy is morally permissible (because no harm is really being done by that act in and of itself), I would myself recommend generally supporting the producers of these products. This is mostly because in the economic system we’re in, we must unfortunately have money to sustain ourselves (and I think piracy is an example of why our economic system needs a radical change /tangent/ ). And if we don’t show them support with our money, they go bye-bye, so it’s in our interests as gamers, audiophiles, etc. to maintain said support for producers if we wish to continue to enjoy them. 😦 A comparable comparison would be that you should probably give your friends gas money sometimes if you plan on borrowing/carpooling with them often.

If you disagree with me or find fault with some part of my case, be sure to leave a comment below.

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Okay, so I was asked about this topic and it’s one better handled where I have more character space than Twitter. 🙂

So, what exactly does atheism mean, and what should it mean? The former question is a little variable (just the nature of language really), but there are more reasonable answers to give, even if there are no definitive, “correct” answers. Whenever this topic comes up, many atheists that run the argument seem to think that this should be known by everyone. “The ‘a’ nullifies the ‘theism’, don’t you see, because it refers to those lacking belief in gods?”, they’ll say (or something like that). The problem here is that they are, sometimes consciously (I think) and other times not, just falling for a trick of language. They’re conflating the the ambiguity in the English language between “don’t believe” (in this case meaning “not affirming as true”) and “believe to be false”. For example, if someone asks me “Do you believe in Santa Claus?”, I think it’s fairly obvious to everyone that when I respond “No, I don’t believe in Santa Claus.” that I mean the proposition “Santa Claus exists” is false, or more likely false than true. Whereas in other situations, such as if asked “Is person X a good person?”, it would be ridiculous to assume that if I refuse to answer “Yes” to the question that I’m saying they’re not a good person. I just don’t know which is the case, so I abstain from going either way, and this is EXACTLY what “lackatheists” are notorious for claiming: That is you don’t believe “God(s) exists” then you are an atheist.

Now, it’s clear to me from everyday interaction with theists on this topic (and just experience in life in general) that when people refer to “atheists”, they’re NOT referring to those who merely “lack belief”, because they don’t go around calling dogs and babies atheists (as some of these “lack of belief” atheists often do, at least for babies); in addition, this is the general sort of definition use by professional philosophers in the Great Debate. This is because the usual conception of the belief spectrum being referenced here is:

|Theist|-|Agnostic|-|Atheist|

With the theist and atheist giving a yes and no, respectively, concerning the existence of God, andnthenagnostics believing neither position is epistemically justifiable. So, it’s perfectly fine for these lack of belief people to go with their preferred definition, but this causes several issues. Firstly, they remove themselves from the conversation inadvertently. Why is this? Well, given that (as far as I believe) we use words as placeholders to convey ideas/concepts to other people, it doesn’t really matter in and of itself what sound or characters we use, so long as our recipients get what we’re trying to convey. So when you guys use this atheism as “lack of belief”, you guys are ignoring the question when asked to justify your atheism. They’re not asking why you merely lack belief, but why you believe it is more likely that gods don’t exist. If you reject their definition, then they can merely make up a new word to refer to that position of going beyond lacking belief. William Lane Craig has made this point before by pointing out that then he’d just ask people who are, quote, “Shmatheists – that is, people who believe gods don’t exist – why they believe gods don’t exist?” And this makes sense, it’s not a trick. If you don’t fit the definition of the word people are using because YOU mean something else by the word, then they’ll simply use another word not in contention to ask their question. If by “red” you mean what I mean by “green”, I’m going to alter my terminology in response so that the conversation is sensible.

Secondly, there’s the issue of coherence. One favorite of these lack of believers is to say that they’re “agnostic atheists” or (rarely) gnostic atheists, meaning they “don’t claim to know, don’t believe” and “know, don’t believe”, respectively, regarding the existence of gods. But don’t you guys see the immediate contradiction here? You guys are saying that the ONLY thing atheism is, is a lack of belief and hence is an either/or situation, but then you’re modulating your atheism with modifiers you intend to denote degrees of difference, which is a clear contradiction. After all, you guys say that you’re either a theist or you lack belief and hence are an atheist. This demonstrates another shortcoming of this definition, I think, which the standard and philosophical definitions maintain easily, as it allows for one to have degrees of belief and disbelief not conflict with the definitions themselves.

My own preferred definite of atheism would be anything along the lines of the following:

“An atheist is one who believes the existence of gods is less probable to be the case (lesser probability than 0.5 on a 0 to 1 scale) than their existence.”

Lastly, some atheists are motivated by or claim that this lack of belief definition nets them some epistemic advantage, since they’re not the ones moving from some default or null position. Well, this is silly. Once you’ve been acquainted with the usual meaning of the word God,as well as the ways by which people try to argue for or against is existence, to claim that you still merely lack belief (because this is what you mean by “atheism”) is to say that you haven’t been affected by the arguments either way, which is a very strange claim indeed, unless you’re merely affirming agnosticism.

Anyway, those are my general thoughts on this topic. Leaves your comments below. Peace 🙂

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Now, this is a complex topic that I have even less business talking about than even other topics I often bring up online – given that I’m just a first year student in philosophy, which I became after building up an interest in it – but I will press on as requested by these 2 raging, militant atheists (is that a redundant description? 😉 ) on Twitter.

Anyway, so my [certainly unoriginal] thoughts on the matter begin as follows. What is being, what does it mean to say that something exists? This is the central question of ontology, and I personally get the feeling that the epistemic hurdles to solidly answering this question are insurmountable. Anyways, perhaps we can at least have a provisional, useful definition to employ here? Well, for a while now I’ve been fascinated with a particular view known as bundle theory. Basically, bundle theory would say that there’s no underlying substance or object to which properties inhere. I suppose you could somewhat analogize it to how a nominalist views sets: sets are essentially all of the members of the set. So, when I refer to a “set”, what I’m really doing is referring to each of the members of the set. Long story short, there’s no ontological overhead, I guess you could so. Similarly, bundle theorists regard “objects” as a mere collection or bundle (hence the name) of properties, and they would argue for this in the following sort of way. Apples, for example, are nothing more than a term we give to a a collection of properties that we sense which meet general criteria that we’ve been culturally influenced to call an apple out of convenience. Now, what sorts of properties constitute an apple? Well, they’ll be red, or green (or whatever), take up about as much space as a baseball or softball, have a sweet or sour taste, etc. So what happens if we start removing these properties? Well, the apple looses its color, size, taste and such, until we’ve excised all of it’s properties. Now, try to conceive of this property-less object; can you? What are you conceiving of? Well, the bundle theorists says you aren’t conceiving of anything! When we conceive of something, we imagine some fuzzy collection of properties, so once yo eliminate those properties, you’re left with nothing by which you could apprehend this object. and bundle theorists take this inconceivability of a property-less object as a good reason to reject substance theory, in addition to the fact that it seems to match our experience that to… experience the world is to have a perceptual model of our sensations. Perhaps I could even give an update to Descartes’ cogito with this in mind:

P1) There are thoughts. (incorrigible proposition)
P2) if there is a process, it requires that there be a bundle of properties (an “object”) in order to exist. (assumption that I have; can give rudimentary argument for is needed)
P3) Thinking is a process.
P4) I refer to this process as “I”.
C) Therefore, I exist.

Not entirely sure about the argument, but I’m just having fun here; criticize it as you see fit. 🙂

So, I’m not sure if the above was necessary for this post (or a good defense of bundle theory), but I’ll press on. When talking about things which exist, what sorts of things, if anything, is necessarily the case? Well, I would tend to go classical here an take the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction as being a necessary, er, facet of reality. But why do I think that? Well for starters, let’s take the law of identity: A = A (A is A). Taken as ontologically necessary, this could be translated to something like “properties A is property A”, or “A is itself”. It seems that we cannot, in any sense of speaking about reality itself, go against this. For example, isn’t it the case that the iPad I’m typing this post from is itself? If I try to affirm otherwise (“The iPad I’m typing this from is not itself”) I contradict myself and utter an incoherent statement that reflects no conceivable state of affairs, because I’m using a term one way and then immediately saying that does not refer to what I just said it did.

Perhaps it could be argued that I’m merely failing to appreciate a potential linguistic-psychological limitation (especially considering I personally am not sold on the idea of conceivability as a means of definitively judging the possibility of things), and you know what, I’m not sure at have a convincing rebuttal to that criticism. But it just seems to vitiate my most fundamental intuitions about the world that I can’t help but reject, pretty much out of hand, opposing these 2 principles or laws as ontologically necessary. #BadPhilosopher

Anyway, that concludes my 2nd post. Ontology and the Metaphysics of logic aren’t exactly my forté, so this is sort of where I’m at currently. Be sure to leave me some interesting criticism, particularly if you take the view that these two principles are arguably NOT necessary. Thanks for reading! 🙂

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Now as this is my first post, I figured I’d go ahead and start out with a defeating argument against same-sex marriage opponents. Of course, I think they’re wrong on several respects, from erroneous and incoherent claims that homosexuals and bisexuals can choose what their sexual attraction is to spurious claims to the inherent inferiority of their ability to parent when compared to heterosexual couples, but I’m here to provide what I think is a decisive case on this issue in support of marriage equality.

So, a claim I hear often amounts to something along the lines of marriage being a religious issue, so the government shouldn’t be involved in trying to force people to go against their religious beliefs. Now, aside from the obvious comparison to the opposition to the allowance of interracial marriage (of which I’m a product, by he way), an interesting dilemma begins to surface for people who oppose marriage equality on religious grounds. Firstly, is it REALLY the case that marriage is an essentially religious act? Now this bit is largely based on my own experience, but most of the time people get married because see it as a demonstration of their love of their partner and their intention to commit to that person. No doubt religious views have something to do with it for some, but it seems to me obvious that the reason people see marriage as a natural thing to do for those they love is because we’re culturally reinforced to believe that is what is to be done, in both the media and in our personal lives, not because we believe that it’s a religious duty. After all, is it not clearly the case that most people who describe themselves as religious do not live their lives wthe way more religion-focused people think they should? If that is the case, why would they fulfill a LIFELONG religious duty when they don’t take relign too seriously?

However, let’s leave that minor objection aside. Let’s take a look at at the approximate level of religiosity of homosexual, bisexual and transgendered peoples,

So as we can see, these groups are nearly evenly split on their religious views, with about 51% of them having religious views and 48% not having religious views. So it seems to be justifiable to say that those polled who are or intend to marry, and hold religious views, believe that they are religiously allowed to get married, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing this (and this is not generally the sort of thing that you can commit merely in a moment of weakness to explain away, like say, an affair). So in a strange but expected hypocrisy, in this case,those who lean conservative on this issue are in fact violating the religious rights of these groups! Why should your religious beliefs regarding marriage trump those held by the religious amongst the LGBT[insert future group letters added here] community? You are in no way being harmed, unlike in cases, of, say, parents who try to pray away sickness in their children, whom subsequently end up dying because their parents refused medical care. And if you’re going to try and go Biblical on this and claim it can be legally decided that this is the way to go, it should be clear that this would be in violation of the First Amendemnt’s Establisment Clause. You’d then be trying to get the government to settle legal issues by appeal to religious doctrines that you hold, but they reject.
So the dilemma, in case it isn’t clear, is that those leaning conservative on the issues of marriage equality must either commit to allowing the Government to settle religious and theological battles as a matter of law or else refrain from demonstrably trying to violate the religious rights of those in the LGBT community. If it’s the former, I cannot wait for the massive legal battles between Protestants and Catholics on various parts of doctrinal disagreements. If it’s the latter, well, I’ve already noted the blatant hypocrisy.

Anyway, those are my quick thoughts on the issue. Leave me some criticism below in the comments if you find fault with my argument or if you think it can be sharpened. Thanks. 🙂